


The Legend of Nymphadora

by Isua



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff, banter without plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28057101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isua/pseuds/Isua
Summary: Tonks has an idea to distract Sirius from his unceasing stuck-inside-Grimmauld-Place angst, and Remus would really prefer that she not die immediately from tripping over the cords.
Relationships: Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks
Kudos: 13





	The Legend of Nymphadora

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing. Trans rights are human rights.
> 
> This is my first fic. I haven’t read the books in a while, only fanfic, so apologies for divergences from canon, actual characterization, and general good sense.

“Why on earth are you doing this, Tonks?”

“Because Sirius will love this. Trust me.”

“Sirius will not love anything that does not involve leaving Grimmauld Place illicitly, firewhiskey, or leaving Grimmauld Place illicitly with a case of firewhiskey. Also the firewhiskey should be illicit.”

“You just don’t appreciate Muggle technology sufficiently.”

Remus looked at the tangle of cords that attached components and joysticks and the charmed ancient television set that Tonks had found left on a sidewalk, old enough that it still had actual dials to change the channel. “I still do not see how you’re getting electrical equipment to work in a nonexistent house lit by candles, Tonks.”

“Muggle family, remember? And, you know, Arthur Weasley? My friend and coworker at the Ministry and noted Muggle enthusiast? You may have met him? He spent all morning messing with it at work and that’s _after_ I let my dad have at it all last week. Super-nice chap. He’s got red hair, you’ve definitely met him at some point.”

“I do indeed remember Arthur, what with having spent all night staking out Narcissa Malfoy’s best friend’s cousin with him last night. Glad he still had some energy this morning. Can you get the wires off the floor, at least? You’re going to trip over them and die and I really will not enjoy explaining that to Moody.”

She waved her wand and a small overly ornate rug flew over and settled atop the cords.

“Oh, so you can trip on the rug instead. I’m so glad you’re being responsible.”

Her hair turned from blue to what he had learned to call “Apoplectic Jabañero” only in the sacred privacy of his mind, just for a moment, and then relaxed back to blue. Remus backed up a step.

“Now look.” She turned the TV on, and odd electronic sounds, music, he supposed it could be described as music, came out.

“Who is Zelda, why is she legendary, and why will Sirius like this?”

“She’s a princess. It’s not important right now. You get to stab things, look!”

“Tonks, you can practice dueling if you need to deal with stabbing urges.”

“Sirius can stab things even when alone and drunk! Alone and drunk and hostile is one of the most common states in which to play video games, it’s perfect!”

“You want him to play video games.”

“I want him to have literally any outlet other than screaming at his mother and pissing off Molly. I know she still made cookies yesterday but they were angry cookies. I could taste it.”

“Well, that’s certainly something nobody else close to Sirius is concerned about, at all.”

“Remus, shut up. I got four controllers. You can play together. Male bonding.”

“Oh good, I definitely needed the emotional support inherent in staring at blocky beeping things on a Muggle screen. Much more rewarding than talking to each other. Or reading. Quietly.”

“Remus, shut up. They’re fun. You could have fun. You could try. Briefly.”

“Very briefly, that octopus thing got you.”

“Bugger! Well, I’ll get it next time. Here, play with me, it’s dangerous to go alone.”

“I do not think I have the required finger dexterity, alas.”

“Remus, shut up. Hit the A button to stab. If you don’t have the finger dexterity for that, I’m so sad for your ex-girlfriends.”

“My—if, if I needed to be murdered by octopus things, the lake at Hogwarts is more than happy to provide, and with the advantage of it being actual real life.”

“You think being murdered in real life is an advantage? Remus, I worry about you. I really do.”

“Everyone worries about the local werewolf. About being murdered in real life by it, generally. Or about getting it murdered, as expediently as possible. I scarcely blame them. So no worries for me, much as I appreciate the thought.”

Where had that come from? He didn’t mean to say that.

“Can you not, Remus? Damn, I needed that heart. Lord, you’re bad as Sirius. BUGGER! Well, you’ll just have to cope with someone worrying about you yourself then, won’t you? shitshitshitYES okay I can worry about you and Sirius both. And your sad lack of dexterity. Pity, your fingers look so elegant holding your Musty Olde Tomes. I do like your hands”

Why was she worrying about him? She wasn’t worrying about him, she was worrying about Sirius. That was fine. She was just picking on him. She did that a lot. And he had perfectly fine fingers, thank you very much. Which she….liked? He decided not to bother processing that.

“Come on, try it. Playing video games with a pretty girl is basically number one on the list of every poor benighted video gamer, and here you are.”

“Tonks, stop with the anime eyes morph. You know it creeps me out.”

“Better?”

“Not the veela model either. I like your face. Put your face back on.”

“No one wants my actual face, Remus. That’s the entire point of knowing a metamorphmagus, you don’t have to see their actual person face.”

Where had that come from? She didn’t mean to say that. He liked her face?

“Shut up, Nymphadora.”

“Don’t call me Nymphadora, git. It’s your fault that rock got me.”

She was not going to process that he liked her face GODDAMMIT THOSE OCTOPUS THINGS WITH THE ROCKS this was too distracting she was dying too much. Time to change games.

“Yes, I am overcome with guilt. I will have to fall back on the recollection of three days ago when I saved you from a Cruciatus and from twisting your sadly vulnerable ankle, to assuage my eternal sense of culpability. Here, have a chocolate enmity cookie, I saved a couple yesterday.”

“Thank you. In your pocket? And I _said_ thank you then, multiple times. Git. And saved you back, thank you very much. Git. Here, let’s try this one.”

“That one doesn’t fit.”

“Oh gosh, you’re right, what a pity I can’t just wave a magic wand at it and fix that OH WAIT.”

Doodle doodle doodle doo. She’d never gotten the hang of waiting through title and setup screens. She wondered if there was a spell to get past this nonsense.

“A hedgehog.”

“Yes, so?”

“Really. A hedgehog. A hedgehog, really?”

“You know, I dated this girl once whose sister was a squib, old wizarding family but no magic whatsoever in the sister. Mad genius, though, there was nothing whatsoever wrong with that woman’s brain, she went into Muggle medicine and told me once there’s one of those gene things called Sonic Hedgehog, tells your body which ways to develop, which side of your hand to put your thumb on. Craziest thing. Named after this game. So yes, Remus, a hedgehog. Hedgehogs are _powerful_.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Neither did I, I’m not a medical Muggle supergenius, I just went out with her sister for a few months.”

“Why’d you break up?”

“Eh, I was starting Auror training and she was starting apothecary training, we drifted. It was fine. I still have a beer with her every so often, send her family a singing Christmas howler, they love that shit. She disapproved of my last boyfriend and she was right and I listened to her and everything. It’s actually shocking to me how mature it all is.” She shrugged and smiled.

“I can see that being a shock, yes. Ow!”

“I’m going to set the hedgehog on you.”

“All right, that’s it, Nymphadora. You are going down.”

“Don't call me that. Going down, am I? At least I’m good at it. I hope you’ve got more lingual dexterity than your poor dear fingers, for the sake of those ex-girlfriends.”

“…..And now I’ve spilled my tea. Thank you, Nymphadora. Why exactly are you so distressed about my ex-girlfriends? You’re going to fall into that pit!....oh look, you died.”

“Bugger! Well you keep goinggggg oh. Oh dear. You gotta watch out for the spikes. _Scourgify_. There, your pants are pristine now. Just like your poor fingers. And your mind.”

“My pants are not your business, Nymphadora. _Watch out for the lava!_ ”

“They could be.”

 **Where had that come from.** Shit, she thought. Why had she said that? She’d been so good about being deniably antagonistic, just ragging on him like Sirius did, like a friend. He kept his business to himself, she’d gotten the impression that he was pretty private, having your werewolf laundry aired by That Asshole Snape would do that, she totally got it. So she just ragged. Ragging on him about girlfriends was a hundred percent different than asking about if he had a girlfriend. Or talking about his pants. Not her business.

She wanted it to be her business but it was not her business. Bugger.

 **Where had that come from.** Shit, shit, shit, he thought, why had she said that? He’d been very carefully not noticing how much the day immediately improved when she stomped into the library and demanded to know what he was reading and why he was reading it and when was he going to read something written in the last century anyway and would he mind reading it to her while she finished signing her reports. He definitely did not like how when she got mad even her eyelashes turned red. This was not fair. How dare she pretend that his careful lack of noticing was due to something mutual? It wasn’t. She was busting his balls, same as always. That was fine. She could…his balls…..No. Time to distract everyone.

“I don’t want to be a hedgehog any more. What else do you have?”

“Are there were-hedgehogs?”

“Very reclusive closed society, harder to break into even than werewolf packs. They won't speak to you unless you pass the arcane initiation rites.”

“Riiiiiiight. Wanna be a plumber?”

“Why not?”

“Okay. So. The idea here is jump on the mushrooms and the turtles.”

“Why? I like mushrooms.”

“And I like turtles. Nevertheless, stomp the bejeezus out of them.”

“Why do you like turtles? They seem cold and slow for you.”

“I like that they’re like 300 million years old, they’ve seen some shit. I saw a fossil turtle at a museum once that was the size of, I don’t know, it was really big. You could ride it. Size of a dinner table, there. I can do similes, I am adept at figurative language, check me out. I just really like to see them stretch their heads out, stretch their legs out, and come out in the open when they could just stay hidden, they get to be brave. And they're so ungainly but they just paddle paddle paddle perfectly happily. I apparently have a lot of thoughts about turtles, I don’t think I knew I had all these thoughts. Why do you like mushrooms? They all want to kill you.”

“Not all of them. I like coming across them in the woods and figuring out what kind they are. I like that they can be bright orange among all the brown old leaves. I like that they only interest the human side of me. I like that they grow in all sorts of circumstances. I like the odd shapes they take.”

“Odd shapes, huh?” She turned her ears into mushrooms. “Nibble on them?”

 **SHIT WHERE HAD THAT COME FROM.** She turned bright pink from the tip of her nose to the tips of her hair. He turned pink from the tip of his nose to the roots of his hair.

They stared at each other a moment. The TV blooped at them as Mario and Luigi died terrible turtle-mediated deaths.

“Nymphadora, I imagine that your abilities, though admirably prodigious, extend only to appearance and not to taste or texture. And inviting a werewolf to bite you is generally contraindicated. Therefore…..”

Shit, she thought. He didn’t want to. Blast. And of course he had to make it about werewolves. Dammit. Her eyelashes flashed red, then faded to gray, then determinedly purple. Carry on. Done. Back to the game. The demo music began.

Shit, he thought. He desperately wanted to. She was not flirting. She did not mean that. She was busting his….Done. Back to the game. Mushroom. Evil plant thing. Boom.

And suddenly, she thought, **_No._** “First, don’t call me Nymphadora. Second, Remus, I do not give one single solitary goddamn that you’re a werewolf. No one asked you to draw blood. Nibble my ears or I’ll be mortally insulted. And you do not want that.” _where. had. that. come. from._ Her eyes were wide with surprise at herself. She stared at him, at the sweet eyes and goofy nose and the floppy hair that she had no idea why she liked so much. “Seriously. It’s a matter of honor now.”

And he surprised himself in turn. “Well, in that case I will be honored to.” And he stopped and he stared at her, at the purple eyelashes and blue hair, and at that point his mind gave up and he leant over and loudly smooched what would have been the top of her ear had it not been a bright yellow-orange mushroom.

“ _Thank_ you. _Was_ that really so difficult.”

She didn’t know how she’d managed to mutter that, while flaming bright pink to clash with the orange ears.

“Well, I delivered, so now I believe you owe me recompense. You may kiss my ear, Nymphadora,” he declaimed grandly. He was apparently drunk on the glee of stomping turtles, he had no idea where any of this was coming from, it certainly wasn’t Remus Lupin, Foul Excrescence of the Dark. (And damn Sirius for announcing that was his rock star name; it was _true_. Neither Sirius nor, apparently, Tonks actually _comprehended_ that. Fools. Though not as foolish as he was acting, he should stop this.)

As he wallowed in self-recrimination (over a period of two seconds, he was well-practiced and efficient), she glanced at the screen, deliberately flung Mario into a lava pit, and turned to him. “Oh, _may_ I?”

“Indeed.”

“I will indeed then.” And she launched herself at his ear, nibbling all over it while bracing a knee to each side of his leg. “You beat mushrooms by leaping on top of them, so accept your vanquishment.”

“I… am vanquished.” And then she stopped, and looked at his face below hers, and looked some more. He lifted his head and looked back, then dipped his chin and looked down.

“Are you.” And she leaned down and kissed him. Just for a moment. She was going to regret this, how were they supposed to do stakeouts now, and while she was telling herself she had bollixed this up and the Order was going to be nothing but awkwardness now, just great Tonks, you’re acting like a complete Nymphadora here, his hand went to the back of her head and pulled her back for another kiss. Another short one, but still, it was a good kiss. He pulled back and looked up at her and neither of them seemed to be able to help smiling. Then both smiles developed into smirks. Then she cracked up, howling with laughter on his lap, and he fell sideways a bit, trying and failing to stop snorting.

“Hedgehogs and mushrooms and turtles, oh my.”

“Shut up and kiss me again.”

“Okay, I take it back what I said about your tongue.”

“Which part of shut up wasn’t clear, Nymphad—"

(Sirius did take to the gift, when presented along with bootleg whiskey that was made in a bog somewhere by hags? Remus wasn’t going to ask. It was illicit, was the point. Tonks was very proud of the progress Sirius made in murdering octopus things, but she was never able to play again without staring at Remus and then utterly losing her shit. Sirius got to the point that he wouldn’t play with either of them, only with Kingsley, who was stoic and unperturbed and absolute _hell_ on turtles.)

**Author's Note:**

> This was my goal for Nanowrimo - to write something, anything. (So what if I'm finishing it in December. :) ) I randomly started typing blather about video games because the kids were listening to way-too-loud youtube videos about Minecraft.


End file.
